


Skirmishes

by obstinate_as_an_allegory



Series: Other Ways Home [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinate_as_an_allegory/pseuds/obstinate_as_an_allegory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hogwarts is a battleground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skirmishes

Third week of her sixth year, Lily Evans lingers behind after her Tuesday Potions lesson to ask a theoretical question that has been turning over in her mind. She waves her friends off, promising to catch them up, and waits for Professor Slughorn, fiddling with the strap of her satchel with the fingertips of one hand. He beams when he sees her waiting.

‘Miss Evans!’ he says expansively. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I won’t keep you long, Professor,’ she promises, spreading out the scrap of parchment with her scrawled calculations. She talks him hastily through them, getting quickly to the point where they inexplicably stop working out.

‘Ha! Quite right, Miss Evans. Nothing gets past you, does it? Not going to let this one get away from you.’

She shrugs. ‘I just want to understand why the calculations don’t…’

It takes her a few minutes to bully him back onto the topic at hand; Slughorn is pompous and tiresome but he _knows_ what he’s about, and at last she coaxes an explanation out of him that seems to account for the problem. Quickly, she jots down the necessary amendment.

‘Right. Got it, thanks Professor. That makes a lot more sense now.’

‘My pleasure, my dear! Ambitious, you see! I always said…’

‘I know, Professor,’ she says hastily, because three weeks into term, Slytherin students have been linked to no fewer than seventeen nasty hexes thrown at Muggle-born students. Perhaps she _might_ have done well in Slytherin, at one time or other, but anyone who thinks that the difference between Slytherin and Gryffindor _these_ days is about temperament is either naïve or blind.

‘Yes, well. It’s true, though, you mark my words…’

He wags a finger at her, gathering up his armful of books, and sweeps out of the room while Lily is still scribbling down the new calculation. She blows on it carefully to dry the ink, and at last folds it up to tuck into her bag, hurrying across the deserted classroom to catch up with her friends.

She slips out the door to find the corridor lined with four or five loitering figures, lazing against the walls.

‘Oi, Evans,’ one of them drawls, slouching into her way.

‘Alright, Nott,’ she says shortly, ducking her head and making to shoulder her way past. He steps into her path again, shoving her lightly.

The others in the corridor are all Slytherin, too – Sev isn’t with them, either, not that she’s sure it would be a relief to see him, these days. She’s cursing herself now for telling the others not to wait. Hogwarts is a battleground; Mary was almost hit by some horrible blistering curse on Thursday; walking around alone is getting to be a bad idea if you’ve got Muggle parents.

‘Excuse me,’ she says pointedly, curling her fingers around her wand at her side.

Nott laughs obnoxiously; the same laugh is taken up by the others – Avery at one side and MacNabb behind her, Narcissa Black at his side.

‘You don’t get to talk to me like that, Mudblood,’ Nott sneers at her, and she thinks, _shit._

 ‘Fine then,’ she snaps. ‘How about “get the fuck out of my way”? Is that better?’

She fires a Disarming spell at him as fast as she can - she’s going to have to be _fast_ – but Nott blocks it, and she’s almost immediately hit from behind by a Stinging hex; not a very bad one, but enough to distract her for a second and she almost loses her wand, feels the tug of a poorly-aimed Disarming spell but manages to cling onto it.

She spins to block a spell fired at her by Narcissa, and sees Avery moving in her peripheral vision.

There’s a clatter of feet further up the corridor, and someone mutters ‘The fuck…?’ and then ‘ _Expelliarmus!_ ’

 Avery swears viciously; Lily lurches forwards to get her back to the wall so they can’t surround her. Avery has clenched both fists, his wand missing; Nott and MacNabb are still pointing their wands at Lily, but Narcissa’s attention has been distracted by the newcomer, who steps out of the shadow of a suit of armour twirling Avery’s wand in his fingers and turns out to be Sirius Black.

 ‘Oh, look, a blood traitor _and_ a Mudblood!’ Narcissa jeers.

 Sirius smirks at her sarcastically and flicks a very brief glance to Lily, who, to be quite honest, isn’t sure whether to be relieved or alarmed to see him.

‘We’ll teach you some fucking respect,’ Avery growls, eyes fixed on the wand between Sirius’ fingers.

‘My mother tried that for sixteen years and it didn’t take, I doubt you’ll have better luck,’ Sirius tells him, taunting him deliberately by tossing the stolen wand up and down in his free hand.

Showing off costs him his concentration. Narcissa shoots a hex at him; it connects with his hip and he swears and retaliates; Lily uses the distraction to shoot a Disarming spell at Nott and then very quickly has to deflect something sent her way by MacNabb. Sirius gets a Stunner past Nott’s defences and he goes down ungracefully in a heap. Lily sidesteps until she’s shoulder to shoulder with Sirius and manages to block another of Narcissa’s blistering curses which would have hit him full in the face.

‘Ta, Evans!’ he says, sounding altogether too cheerful for the dire situation. 

She growls at him to ‘ _Fucking_ concentrate.’

She hits MacNabb with a Body Bind and feels a rush of vindictive triumph, and then Avery – still wandless – launches himself at her and knocks her bodily into Sirius, who stumbles. Avery gets a handful of her hair and pulls painfully. Sirius rights himself and shoots sparks at Avery, who lets go of Lily and swings a punch at Sirius. Sirius dances back out of his way and gets caught off-guard by a hex from Narcissa which stings the back of his shoulders. He drops to one knee, hissing in fury.

Lily casts another Body Bind on Avery while he’s off balance; he keels over half on top of Sirius. Lily is poised to grab Sirius by the sleeve and make a run for it when an aristocratic voice calls down the corridor, ‘Ciss, you coming?’

Sirius goes rigid.

Narcissa, hair in disarray, is standing between the immobilised forms of Nott and MacNabb; Sirius is picking himself up from under the board-like figure of Avery; Lily herself is holding her wand on Narcissa and trying to keep one eye on the upright figure approaching from further up the corridor, which, she realises suddenly, is Regulus Black.

 He takes in the scene wide-eyed, eyes skating jittery over Sirius and his lip curling at the sight of Lily. Sirius, eyes hard and jaw tight, trains his wand on his brother.

 ‘Give me a hand with these scum, Regulus,’ says Narcissa, her eyes carefully measuring her younger cousin’s reaction.

 ‘What happened to the others?’ Regulus says faintly. He looks very uncertain, and he’s very carefully not looking at Sirius as he talks past him to Narcissa.

Lily shakes herself and takes a step back, not lowering her wand. ‘Black,’ she hisses, and then realises that all of them are fucking Blacks. ‘Sirius. C’mon. Let’s go.’

 ‘Regulus!’ Narcissa prompts, jerking her wand in the direction of Lily and Sirius.

 He still hasn’t moved, Lily kicks his foot, tugs at his sleeve with her free hand, and he reluctantly starts to shift.

 ‘You’re nothing!’ Narcissa shrieks at them as they retreat. ‘No different from the Mudblood, now, Sirius!’

 Regulus says nothing, and makes no move to stop them leaving. Lily doesn’t let go of Sirius, pulling him along with a fist in his robes until they’re halfway up the stairs at the end of the Potions corridor. He breathes sharp and angry through his teeth but he doesn’t resist.

 They’re nearly to the entrance hall when Sirius comes back to himself, shaking himself bodily like a wet dog. ‘Fuck,’ he hisses, as though he’s only just processed what happened.

 Lily gives him a sideways look. ‘Yeah, pretty much. What was all that?’

 He blinks. ‘Came back for my textbook,’ he says shortly, though he must know that’s not what she means. He’s very pale.

 Lily gives him a sceptical sideways look and then, halfway up the corridor, bundles him into an empty classroom.

 ‘What? Evans –‘

 ‘You alright?’ she asks brusquely.

 He grimaces, rolling his shoulders a bit. ‘Fine. You?’

 She gives him a doubtful look. She can feel the after-effects of a stinging hex on the back of her calf, and she feels pretty shaken, but she shrugs obstinately at him, because two can play at this game.

 ‘You going to tell me what that was all about?’ she demands.

‘How should I know?’ he grumbles. ‘You started it.’

Lily leans pointedly against the door and stares him down. He sighs, and slumps onto the edge of a desk. ‘Fine. Did they attack you?’

 She nods jerkily.

 ‘Fuck,’ he says under his breath. Out loud, he adds, ‘You’ve heard of this – movement. Death Eaters, the twats are calling themselves.’

 Lily moves over to sit on the desk next to him, since he no longer seems to be planning to evade her. ‘The Voldemort thing?’

 ‘Yeah, him. He’s been recruiting pureblood fanatics to stir up trouble against anyone who isn’t – well, you know.’

 Lily tries not to look too sceptical; this is, after all, _Sirius Black_ she’s talking to.

‘Not – not to be rude or anything, but I’d sort of gathered you were pretty damned pureblood yourself.’

 ‘I don’t count anymore,’ he says, voice gone quiet and hollow; he doesn’t meet her eye even when she looks at him, taken by surprise.

 She considers his brooding profile – he’s looking a bit more normal now but when she’d first seen him at the start of the year on the station platform with Remus he’d been all hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed, and while Lily emphatically doesn’t care _what_ James Potter and his idiot friends are up to, she’s not completely immune to common room gossip.

 ‘I’d heard… people have been passing round a story about you running away from home.’

 His eyes stay fixed on the opposite wall, narrowed slightly as he just waits for her to elaborate.

 Lily sighs. ‘Well. Is it true, then?’ she says bluntly.

 He shrugs jerkily. ‘Depends what you’ve heard, doesn’t it?’

 ‘Fuck sake, Black,’ she snaps. ‘ _I’m_ not spreading gossip about you. You know it’d just inflate your head even more.’

He purses his lips, but doesn’t break his determined staring match with the wall.

‘Alright. I heard that you left your parents’ house in the summer, after some row. Or possibly that they chucked you out. That’s it. Well, there are a few embellished versions going around, probably, but I haven’t paid much attention.’

‘Yeah,’ he croaks, voice very low. ‘That’s pretty much it, then.’

He shakes himself a little, and does, _finally_ , look at her. ‘My family are into the whole Slytherin pureblood supremacy bit. Told ‘em I didn’t agree. A row ensued.’

 ‘And you – left?’ she says hesitantly, because as infuriating as he’s being it’s clear that he’s still upset about it.

He hums, examining the surface of the table now with exaggerated interest. ‘Mm. I punched Regulus in the mouth. My mother cursed me a few times. I told her I was leaving. It all got a bit out of hand. And then I got the Knight Bus and showed up at James’ place in the middle of the night. Gave them a bit of a scare. They were – they were really fucking good about it, actually.’

 His voice stays completely flat until the last sentence, when he stumbles, voice cracking raw, and frowns viciously at the table as if angry with himself for letting the façade slip. Lily gapes at him, stuck on an earlier detail.

 ‘Your mother – cursed you?’

He shrugs again. ‘Scary woman, my mother. You’d like her.’ The flippant comment is out before he’s stopped to think. He grimaces, though Lily is too used to the casual insolence to register anything wrong with the remark until he’s already retracted it. ‘No, come to think of it, you wouldn’t get on.’

Of course, she thinks. His mother would probably curse me into next week for being a Mudblood, like one of his cousins just tried to.

 ‘She _cursed_ you, though?’ Lily repeats, feeling that she can’t just let this go until someone has acknowledged how fucked up that is.

 ‘Mm. I’d just punched Reg’s teeth in; she was a bit worked up. There was a bit of a shouting match; nothing very memorable. And a few spells exchanged, as well. After a bit I thought, fuck this, better get away for a bit and let her cool off.’

 He’s still speaking in that strange, flat tone; each word dragged out of him, labouring hard to sound casual. Lily watches him and doesn’t move.

 ‘I was on my way out, but she cursed me again when I was at the top of the stairs, and I fell. Then I think I tried a few hexes to get her off my back, and…’

 He frowns at the wall, and his voice has slipped so low that Lily isn’t sure he’s really talking to her at all. ‘She Crucio’d me,’ he whispers. Lily blinks. She’s not sure she should interrupt, but at this point keeping silent seems irresponsible too.

 ‘Black, you know the Ministry can get her for that,’ she suggests quietly.

 ‘No,’ he says flatly; it’s not clear whether he’s denying it or just refusing to entertain the idea.

 Her mind’s gone blank, appalled at the idea that Sirius’ mother could have – she’s never seen the Cruciatus, but they read the theory in fourth year; the textbook had some horribly detailed first-person accounts of it. She realises that she’s been silent too long and forces her mind back to the present.

 ‘So, um - that’s why Narcissa…’

 ‘Mm. They burned my name off the tapestry, apparently.’ He catches her look and hastily explains, ‘It’s like a family tree, kind of thing. Anyone who doesn’t toe the line gets scorched off. I’m not the first.’

 ‘…so – that means?’

 ‘…no right to the family name, shame to the family legacy, so on and so forth,’ he concludes bitterly.

 ‘Sounds like you’re well shot of them, Black,’ she says awkwardly, and then realises, and stammers, ‘I mean – um, Sirius.’

 ‘S’alright,’ he says, staring absently at the far wall. ‘It _is_ my name. I mean – call me whatever, I don’t care.’ He shrugs, a little too jerkily. ‘The Potters are brilliant, taking me in, but I’m not going to start calling myself Potter. For one thing, no one’d _ever_ believe my hair and Prongs’ came from the same gene pool.’ He tosses his head back, and his long black hair immediately settles back into its customary tousled elegance. He’s not wrong there.

 Lily watches him, more closely than she ever usually would, and sees the way he wears the carelessness like a mask over his sharp edges. She says, ‘You know, Black is actually a pretty common surname for Muggles. There’s a couple called Black on my parents’ road. Simon and Wendy Black.’

 Sirius looks up in surprise, and then very suddenly breaks into a huge grin. ‘My mother would do her nut if she knew,’ he says, with badly disguised glee. ‘Simon and Wendy, eh?’

 Lily smiles. ‘Mm-hmm. Simon’s an insurance salesman. It means he – sells people an agreement that if their house burns down, his company will pay for it to be rebuilt.’

 Sirius looks politely baffled. She enjoys his confusion slightly too much. ‘Wendy’s a part-time lollipop lady,’ she adds.

‘She’s a _what_?’

Lily sniggers. ‘It’s probably not worth explaining,’ she says.

 He gives her a disbelieving look, eyebrows raised, and grunts. He’s still smiling faintly, though, and Lily congratulates herself for having _finally_ found the right thing to say.

 She does sort of understand. Obviously, Sirius’ story is shocking, and his home life is about as far from her own as she can imagine. But if there’s one thing she is painfully familiar with, it’s how your own family can be uniquely positioned to kick you where it hurts.

 She hesitates. ‘Look, I get it,’ she says eventually, swinging her legs idly. He glances sharply at her, eyebrows creased sceptically, but without anger.

‘Not the – getting burned off the tapestry and the mad fascist politics and the – fucking _Cruciatus_ curse, oh my god – because all that is _insane_.’

 He shrugs, conceding the point.

 ‘But, um. My sister doesn’t speak to me any more. I don’t – it’s not the same.’

 His lips stretch into a crooked smile, faux-lascivious. ‘Didn’t know you had a sister, Evans…’

 ‘Oh, shut up. She’s not – you know, not a witch. She’s getting married pretty soon actually. She doesn’t want me to be there.’

 Ridiculously, Sirius looks appalled by this idea. ‘That’s fucked up,’ he objects. ‘What, she think you’ll turn her husband into a toad when she kisses him or something?’

 Lily wonders what mangled version of the Muggle fairy tale has somehow seeped into Sirius’ consciousness to give him that idea.

 ‘No, I think she’s just ashamed of me,’ she says. ‘For being – um – a freak.’

 Lily hasn’t talked to anyone about this in a while. She used to chat to Sev about it, and to the girls sometimes, but the conversation about the wedding is still a recent wound and she hasn’t felt like bringing it up.

 Sirius looks at her critically, a wrinkle between his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t say “freak,” myself,’ he muses. ‘”Ginger,” now. That’d be accurate.’

 ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says, a laugh startled out of her. ‘It’ll be a shit wedding anyway,’ she adds darkly. ‘Her fiancé looks like a pink rhino and they’re serving prawn cocktail for the starter.’

 ‘What kind of fucking barbarian puts prawns in a cocktail?’ Sirius demands, as if his sensibilities are deeply offended by this. 

‘It’s like – prawns and mayonnaise-y stuff. It’s not a drink.’

 ‘Muggles are crazy.’ He hums absently, inspecting his own fingernails, and then looks up at her sideways through his hair. ‘We could crash the wedding in disguise? Hex the pink rhino and run off with all his booze?’

 The idea isn’t without its appeal. Lily leans back on her hands. ‘We could turn the confetti into a swarm of little paper gnats that would follow the happy couple around and bite them all day.’

 ‘Hide pixies in the bouquet,’ Sirius proposes.

‘Dose the champagne with ageing potion.’

 ‘Smuggle in a Niffler.’

 ‘Cast a Sticking charm on the dance floor.’

 ‘Bite the arse out of the groom’s trousers.’

 Lily gives him a flat look. ‘I’ll leave that one to you, thanks.’

 Sirius blinks, and then smirks in a barely-contained way as if he’s got in mind some really hilarious joke that he’s not sharing. ‘Ha. I mean, you know, get a – train a dog to do it.’

 ‘Right. Because that’s a completely foolproof plan. Sure you didn’t hit your _head_ when Avery shoved you?’

 He laughs sharply. ‘Nah. S’alright.’

 There’s a commotion outside that suggests they’re getting to the end of the lunch hour, and then familiar voices yelling in the corridor.

 ‘Padfoot? Oi, _Padfoot_!’

 Sirius lifts his head, smiling faintly, and calls ‘Here!’

 James sticks his head round the door and raises his eyebrows in surprise at the sight of them. Remus slips past him into the room. ‘How long’s it take to fetch your sodding textbook?’ he demands, palming the back of Sirius’ head. ‘Hi Lily,’ Remus adds, and she gives him a little wave.

‘We’ve been looking for you for aaages,’ James whines as he follows Remus into the classroom.

 ‘For about ten minutes,’ Peter clarifies, grinning.

 ‘Evans started a fight,’ Sirius explains. ‘Decided to pitch in and lend a hand.’

 ‘Who was it blocked that blistering curse from hitting you in the face?’ Lily reminds him.

 ‘My ginger knight in shining armour,’ Sirius concedes, with an absurd little bow.

 James gapes at them. ‘What? Seriously? Who was it?’

‘Are you both alright?’ Remus asks quietly. Sirius shrugs, grinning adoringly at him.

 Lily mutters, ‘You might want to take a look at his back.’ Remus frowns, and his fingers quickly find the charred patch across the back of Sirius’ robes. Sirius squirms, protesting.

 ‘Let’s get back to the common room and see to this,’ Remus insists, nudging Sirius off the desk he’s sitting on.

 Lily spots Alice and Mary through the doorway and flags them down, nodding to Remus as she passes.

 ‘And you’ll let me know the date for the wedding, right Evans?’ Sirius calls to her back.

 She laughs and looks over her shoulder. ‘Sure thing.’

As she moves away she hears James’ voice. ‘What wedding? Oi, Pads, it’s not funny, I’ll hex you, what _wedding_?’

 

 

 

 


End file.
